Filtering by Category: Travel

En route to Hampi, women construction workers walk along the train track

Stepping off the path + A train ride to Hampi, India

Added on August 6, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

"Chai chai chai! Chai chai chai!"

"Pakora! Samosa! Pakora!"

We are on a train heading east to Hampi. Food hawkers jump on and off at every stop, rushing through the cars shouting, selling refreshments. I want to taste everything that passes—samosas served from a worn cardboard box, crispy masala rice snacks in a giant plastic garbage bag, fresh mango lassis carried in a tattered milk crate. Yet I cringe as the vendors grab food with their bare hands, passing it to customers wrapped in sheets of used newspaper."Chai chai chai! Chai chai chai!"

Driving away from an angry mob of kids swarming the rickshaw

The sting of fear, poverty & injustice in India

Added on July 25, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

I am being mobbed and I'm scared.

A crowd of kids is swarming, pushing the rickshaw with me inside. My driver yells, telling them to back off. Crowd psychology has already kicked in though, and more little arms reach inside to grab me.

Cows at a farm along the road in Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary, India

Jungle Leopards + Adventuring in Goa, India

Added on July 18, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

Goa is where we motorbike through dry rural winding country backroads, weaving past gypsy camps filled with colorful Rajasthani women who wear brilliant red orange saris and layers of silver jewelry. Tents line the road where these workers from the north live temporarily doing hard construction labor, carrying bowls of rock on their head. Yaks and cows lazily wander, oblivious to the cars and motorbikes that zip past. The farther away from the beach we get, the more worn and dry the landscape becomes. Yellow haystacks á la Monet and brown rice paddies void of crop or water fly past as we move deeper inland.

Hauling in a boat after a day at sea, sunset view from my favorite hangout on Palolem beach

The value of mapping what you know + Beach life in Goa, India

Added on July 12, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

I've grown to love late night arrivals. A blanket of darkness wraps around everything keeping it secret until morning's unveiling. There are so many unknowns that come with travel: Will this new bed have bugs in it? Will I die in a rickshaw? Will there be toilet paper? All that is unfamiliar dawns the next day. Ok, maybe not all, but at least you get to see where it is that you've landed.

Exploring The Quiraing on the Isle of Skye, Scotland — Exploring The Quiraing on the Isle of Skye, Scotland

Wanderlust + Solitude vs. loneliness + How I finally decided to travel the world

Added on June 15, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

I have always had it in me, wanderlust. It's pretty much forever been my dream to explore the world through long-term travel.

Forget those short stolen twelve days of annual vacation allotted to working America (even though that's all the time I've had these past few years). No, that kind of travel is frenzied, restricting the majority of life to an unnatural cycle of constant want of more. I'm talking about the kind of long-term travel where you give up owning most things, leave behind a stable home, learn to live simply on a budget, and really see the world.

Traditional puppets for sale at the street market in Fort Kochi, Kerala

Exploring the heart of Fort Kochi, India

Added on May 22, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

Luckily the local government hospital isn't the only thing we see while in Fort Kochi. A casual rickshaw tour offers a different glimpse of life in this South Indian spice capital. It's not the churches or museums that grab my attention with the story of this place, but the people. And the street goats.

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On suffering, survival, & the Indian heart

Added on April 30, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

I am at the hospital. A woman wearing a hijab motions for me to sit next to her.

"Where you from?" she stares up with wonder, as if she's never seen anyone so tall before. If I ever thought the frequent statement you're tall from strangers back in the States was annoying, I've come to accept that being nearly six feet in India makes me quite a giant of a superstar. Oftentimes I am wary of this attention as it can mean photo after cell phone photo with teenage boys and entire extended families. But right now, it's just a woman and a man who want to meet me, so I sit.

Docked houseboats on the backwaters in Alleppey, India

Houseboating through the backwaters of Kerala, India

Added on March 29, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

Dawn is breaking, soft and blue. The river and I are just rousing from sleep. Gazing out the window, a placid bed of water gently ripples beneath me as a bird dips down in search of breakfast.

I have spent the night on a houseboat in the famous Kerala backwaters. Here, a web of about 500 miles of lagoons weave between barrier islands inland from the Arabian sea on the western side of southern India.

Holy men sitting by the Ganges river in Varanasi

How to find something to believe in: the search for a guru in India

Added on March 7, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

Searching for a guru is trendy in India, especially if you're a Westerner. I've begun to theorize that this eternal quest is driven by what is lacking back home in the West––a culture with belief in something more meaningful than the self.

India is the perfect place to visit, then, because spirituality is so omnipresent in a non-preachy sort of way. I should have known of its importance months prior to arrival, simply from the visa application. Halfway down the form I was required to check a box indicating my religious affiliation. For the record, agnostic and atheist weren't even listed as options.

A hand-painted semi truck hauling goods in southern India

Hand-painted semi trucks of India

Added on March 1, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

India is a land of beauty and adornment with colors, textures, and patterns abound. It's also a place of curiosities. Mash these two things together, the surprising with the decorative, and you'll find some pretty unique things.

One of my favorite examples of this is the beautifully incongruous hand-painted semi truck.

Watching the sun set from beneath palm trees at a peaceful yoga ashram in Kerala, India

Meditation, culture, & yoga: Ashram life in Southern India

Added on February 10, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

My foot is asleep. No, I take that back. My entire leg is asleep. A numb tingling sensation that reminds me of childhood gymnastics shoots upwards through my body. I have been sitting cross-legged in silent meditation, wrapped in the darkness of early morning for satsang (sanskrit for in the company of the "highest truth") since 6:00AM. Given my current inability to feel my legs, I'm not sure things are quite so enlightening right now.

Decorative remains after a puja ceremony — Checking out beautiful decorative designs from a puja ceremony at the yoga ashram in Kerala

Sometimes you have to surrender before you win + Answering Mother India's call

Added on January 30, 2013 by Jessica Yurasek.

Stepping out of customs and into a crowded pen of late-night travelers, the warm Mumbai air reassures me we are no longer in China. Bunches of people are waiting, but not for us. Unfortunately, that appears to include the taxi driver we'd supposedly hired in advance.

"Sometimes you have to surrender before you win. Surrender is at the heart of the Indian experience." — Gregory David Roberts, from Shantaram

If there's one thing I've learned about India, it's that surrender really is at the heart of the Indian experience. There are so many inexplicable hoops and loops to everything here, and the method in which they are worked out rarely makes logical sense.

In this instance, in order to find our driver, we have to pay someone to contact someone else who eventually discovers our guy sleeping in his car.